I love Diablo. Everyone loves Diablo, right? Diablo 2 is still the best hack n’ slash RPG out there. With Diablo 3 constantly not getting a release date, some might be looking for alternatives while waiting. Here comes Torchlight for people who are impatient for a game of the genre.

Apparently made by some people who worked on Diablo and virtually unknown “Fate”, it’s something every fan of the genre should at least take a look at to see if it’s interesting.

So read on!

Developer: Runic Games
Publisher: Perfect World Entertainement (Encore Software Inc. at retail)
Date of Release: November 17, 2009 (December 1, 2009 in retail)
Platforms: PC

Genre: Hack n’ Slash RPG
Players: 1

Looks and Sounds
The characters have a semi-realistic cartoony look, almost anime-ish, but in non-cell-shaded 3D. They look pretty good and have quite a bit of personality to their looks. Nothing incredibly original, but very nice nonetheless. Though I really like that any piece of armor or weaponry you equip to a character will instantly appear on the character, changing his overall appearance. The areas look really good as well. The town of Torchlight is all sorts of meh, but the Torchlight mines are a things to behold. Very good looking environments, and surprisingly varied considering it’s a mine. It starts with a basic mine setting that’s pretty boring, but then you have fairy-ish forests, dark dungeons and fortresses, dark caves with deep pits and high platforms, mystical looking caves… There’s lots of really cool-looking areas there. My problem here is that, after a few floors, everything starts looking the same and you really can’t wait to get to a new place. The enemy design is not really great though. Basic imps, goblins, elementals, spiders… though there area few interesting looking enemies, there’s nothing really original. Not bad, but not great.

Sound-wise, the game has almost no music, but the sounds themselves aren’t too bad. There’s a lot of moments where I can hear some sounds recycled from Diablo, but that’s not too bad and they’re a bit tweaked. The voice acting is basic, not the best I’ve heard, but nowhere near terrible either. Though there’s one annoying part, when the “narrator” is constantly telling me I activated a trap, when I clearly saw the barrel explode when I hit it… Overall the game sounds okay, no big problem here.

Story
The story is… pretty boring. You play as a random adventurer, you follow some guy (Brink) who needs your help in the mines of the town of Torchlight, and then both he and you get infected by “amber”. It transforms him into a monster, which you end up killing, and you have to find a cure before the same happens to you. Brink was followed by a friend named Syl, who will help you find a cure. Both of them were called by their mentor, who was also taken over by the power of the amber and is being controlled by an evil mastermind, and in the end you have to take care of him. Simple stuff.

The story isn’t incredible, none of the characters are really interesting, and all it really does is just give you a basic goal and motivation to go through to the next parts of the game. Definitely not a game you’ll be going back to for the story.

Gameplay
The gameplay here could easily be explained with one word: Diablo 2.2. Really, it’s a mix between Diablo, Diablo 2, and elements we’ve seen from Diablo 3, but just not quite as good as Diablo 2 (and hopefully 3). But there’s a few interesting things here so let’s check it out in detail!

Game flow
The game flows at a pretty fast pace. Depends on how you do things though. In the main dungeon, you just explore until you find the stairs down to the next floor. There’s always various paths that bring to dead-ends and such, with some levers and switches opening other paths to treasures and loot. Killing enemies also gives you cash and loot, so does destroying barrels, though occasionally barrels are filled with TNT, or trapped. After every few floors in the dungeon, you’ll usually find a boss, which will lead you to getting your next objective after killing it. You can also find fishing spots, where you can, obviously, get fish. Fish either gives temporary stat boosts, or transform your pet into various creatures. One interesting thing with the pet is that he acts as a secondary inventory, but also that, on the top left of the screen where you have the Pet’s life bar, there’s a green button. If you click it, your pet will leave to the town and sell everything he has on him. A nice addition I say, prevents you from constantly using TP scrolls to sell all the worthless junk you find.

In the town, there’s a few things you can do. Other than talking to NPCs and going at various shops (basic item shops, a blacksmith, a gamble guy like in Diablo 2, orcs that can remove magic stones from your equipment), various characters give you quests. There’s a robot that requests that you kill various boss enemies, a magician that asks for various types of ember you’ll find in the main dungeon, and a guy who can open portals to side-quest dungeons where you must find a certain item for him. The portal quests are really fun as they pit you against enemies that are a lot stronger than your current level. The rest of the quests you’ll basically stumble upon while exploring the Torchlight mines.

Just for reference, the mine has 35 floors, and after you finish that there’s a bonus dungeon with infinite floors(apparently) where enemies get up to level 1000.

Fighting
The fighting is as simple as it gets. Point at something you want dead and click it until it dies. Here you can assign skills and items to the numbers on your keyboard, and to you left-click and right-click on the mouse (though the left-click will usually be normal attack button), which will activate the item or skill right when you press the assigned key. You can also assign a skil to the Tab button, which, when pressed, will switch with the skill assigned in the left-click button. Not much else to say here. If you’ve played Diablo or any other game of the genre, you know exactly how it plays already.

Leveling
Here you gain 2 things when killing monsters: Experience and Fame. Fame is only gained when you kill bosses or mini-bosses, and it’s also a reward for quests(in addition to experience, gold and items). When your experience bar is full, you level up. This gives 5 stat points you can distribute all you want between Strength, Magic, Dexterity and Defense, and one Skill point, which you can assign to any skill. When your Fame bar is full, you get a Fame level up. This just gives you an extra skill point. Strength boosts physical attacks, Magic boosts spell damage and effectiveness, Dexterity boosts long-range attacks and Defense reduces the damage you get. Farily simple concept here. And equipment will usually have requirements in various stats, as well as level.

Each character has 3 skill trees. Each 5 levels, up to level 25, another set of skills in each skill tree. And each skill can be boosted up to level 10. There’s 2 types of skills: Active skills, which are usually attacks or buffs, and passive skills, which will usually give damage boosts or defense boosts. What’s interesting here is that the “skill trees” don’t require you to put skill points in skills that are higher in the skill tree, so you won’t have to do like in other games and put skill points in skills you won’t ever use. This enables for some really cool customization. In addition to skills, you also get spell scrolls. You can equip up to 4 on your character, and 2 on your pet. Not much to say here, they pretty much work just like skills.

Finally, the equipment. To be honest, I’m disappointed in enemy drops here. After finishing the game, all my equipment was just things I bought from the store, instead of powerful items I got from bosses or hidden chests. So anyways… There’s various types of equipment you can get. Helmets, armors, shoulderpads, belts, gloves, boots, shields, one amulet and 2 rings. And of course weapons. In the hands, you can either hold two 1-handed weapons, one 1-handed weapon and a shield, or one 2-handed weapon. One interesting thing is that, in addition to the weapons stats, you also get how much damage per second the weapon does, so you can more easily compare new weapons to the ones you currently have. All types of equipment can have Sockets. In those, you can put in gems to make them better.

Overall
Torchlight is a pretty good game. Not needing you to concentrate on one  skill tree enables for some good customization, the number of equipment you can put on definitely gives you lots of liberty with your character and it’s overall really fun to play.

It’s not without problems though. Mainly the fact that it’s really repetitive, and that the locales themselves are also really repetitive. And it’s really easy unless you go on the hardest difficulty. I went through most of the game (using the “barbarian” character) with only the basic special attack you start with and passive skills. Even the harder areas were really easy because not only are you constantly over-flowing with cash, but you constantly find healing items, making it near impossible for you to die.

The lack of online is also a shame, it could have really spread its wings if there was something like Battle.net.

If you’re a Diablo fan patiently waiting for Diablo 3, Torchlight is a nice diversion at best. It won’t last you until Diablo 3 comes out, but it’s definitely not bad, and it’s worth a playthrough or two. Otherwise it’s a pretty good introduction to the genre, and at its starting price it’s definitely not asking too much.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Fun, solid gameplay
- Looks nice
- Good customization

Cons
- Gets repetitive fast
- Quite easy (though there’s difficulty levels which kinda nulls this point, and a Hardcore mode where you lose your character if you die)
- No online

The Save Factor
The starting price is $20. It’s a good game and definitely worth the low starting price. So the Save Factor for this game is $20.

jobocan Games, PC, Review